Remember the Gardens project within the Artboom Festival KrakówRemember the Gardens project is an attempt to discuss the rights to the green terrains inside Krakow City center. There's a lack of parks, playgrounds and gardens in the city yet the beautiful and vast gardens are hidden from the wider public by the monasteries.Selected projects:

"Do You Know What is Behind The Wall?" grafitti slogan, by Malwina Antoniszczak and Jakub de Barbaro

Series of stickers with the existing and imaginary peep holes in the garden walls, created by Malwina Antoniszczak.Project curators: Małgorzata Mleczko, Patrycja Musiał (No Local)Project substantive consultant: Jan Sowa

“There are no more than 1,000-1,100 houses in the whole city, besides, taking account of the area of the city, their number cannot be bigger. That is why it is all the more violent when you hear that there are 72 churches and 30 monasteries here.”
Friedrich Zöllner’s account, 1791

“The inhabitants of Krakow were constantly pestered by collectors or monks from the so-called mendicant orders and other monasteries; they all begged for alms under different pretences, whilst characterised by obtrusiveness and unpleasantness.”
Eugeniusz Barwiński about a situation of orders in the 18th century

A discussion on the subject of the right to a city has been going on in many places in the world – from the Latin America through the Western Europe to India. Whom and to what purpose should the city public space serve – private or particular interest or the needs of all inhabitants? Who and how should decide on it? What does it mean in practice that the city space is public? Is the private ownership of few a more important value than fulfilment of basic everyday needs of most of the inhabitants, such as provision of meeting places, recreation environment, comfortable and environment-friendly transport?

The problem also concerns Krakow. Apart from typical and universal matters connected with the right to the city, we are dealing with another, Krakow-specific problem. In the crowded and constantly jammed centre, where, apart from the Planty, there are hardly any parks and recreational spaces, huge green areas have been excluded from the city tissue – monastic gardens are surrounded by walls and unavailable to the average inhabitant.

The project concerns the problem of walled-in monastic gardens in the Krakow city centre – it is to inform the inhabitants about the existence of these areas, about the fact that big green areas, unavailable to citizens, can be found within the second ring road.

The project includes extensive historical, legal and economic research, conducted by a specialist dealing with the subject, which defines the current use of the monastic green areas. Collected information will be available in full in the form of leaflets and display boards in the Monastic Gardens Information Point and in buildings and artistic intervention places rented for the needs of the project, from which it will be possible to see the gardens (without violation of ownership), which is to highlight the distance and unavailability of these areas.

Guided excursions to selected places of artistic intervention and buildings will be organised every day (one excursion per day) during the festival. Their programme will be based on previously conducted research. Moreover Google Earth display-boards/printouts developed by a graphic artist showing the green areas within the second ring-road and one large-format picture of a chosen monastic garden, made by a professional photographer/artist will be exhibited in the Monastic Gardens Information Point.

A discussion with invited guests, on the subject of the inhabitants’ right to the city will be held during the festival in the Monastic Gardens Information Point.